Chelsea 1-2 Sunderland: Defeat, Home record gone and Liverpool take advantage.

Chelsea headed into the game yesterday against Sunderland knowing that a win would take us top of the league and would have put real pressure on Liverpool. The complete opposite happened as Sunderland won 2-1, Jose Mourinho's home record is over and earlier this afternoon, Liverpool have beaten Norwich to take a five point lead with three games to go in the title race.

We can sit and blame the officials as much as we like but Chelsea's performance wasn't good enough DESPITE the penalty given to Sunderland late on not being a penalty at all (watch the replays). Once again we struggled to break down a team that comes to the Bridge to defend and to line up with ten men behind the ball. Our play was too slow, too laboured and once again having that clinical touch in front of goal deserted us.

It really, really pains me to say it but the title is Liverpool's even if we beat them next weekend. They are on a fantastic run of form and most importantly of all, have beaten the clubs lower down the league when push comes to shove, just like today against Norwich.

For Chelsea to lose three games against Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and Sunderland in the last few weeks isn't good enough. For a team looking to become Champions, it's three defeats you simply cannot have.

Looking back at the game yesterday and the other goal we conceded there would of course be an argument that Cech would have held the ball when the initial shot came in. Schwarzer lost control of the ball, couldn't hold onto it and Connor Wickham (who looks a good player by the way) beat anyone else to the rebound to flick it into the net.

As for Chelsea, it's so frustrating. We have the quality, we have the players and the ability but we stumble and struggle against teams that play a certain way here. If anything, once again you have to look at the way we play and the fact that we are unable to change to mix things up. Someone like Romelu Lukaku playing as the focal point up front and playing balls up to him to feed off of would have been perfect yesterday, just to give Sunderland's back four something different to think about.

It never happened and now our title hopes are a long, long way away.